TRANSFORMERS 2 (possible spoilers)

It's bigger, bolder, more action oriented, louder, and less mastabatory than the original. Okay, that's what I get for watching CASTROVALVA part 3 and then this. It's TRANSFORMERS so there's no real big theme here except "let your children go and grow up and on their own even if it means they could die horribly by being ripped up or crushed by alien giant robots fighting evilly" but whatever. There's no real depth to anything here to be honest except that and...in a true reflection of your...I mean our...society, the boy gets the girl and if he doesn't it's really terrible. Nothing means anything unless he gets her or she gets him. It's also VERY loud, full of great action sequences, however, I now agree with Anthony Horowitz's saying, "In an action movie there can be too much action," which I didn't agree with in 2005 or whenever he said it concerning STORMBREAKER. He can be forgiven for that. The reasons he said it was that they cut out a great sequence from his book STORMBREAKER where two enemy agents chase down Alex Rider in cornfield surrounded by an electric fence...with cutting machines and motorbikes. They shouldn't have and the movie, like all Horowitz's books, have action that makes sense, is logical, is VERY exciting, and relevent to the plot (okay, they never should have had the two women fighting in the movie as it was stupid, silly, and overdone and NOT funny but that wasn't in the book). Anyway back to TRANSFORMERS: There's too much action. Every action sequence can be trimmed by at least two minutes or less. The movie never lets up on this for the most part and when it does, you're just waiting for the next big set piece of action.

At times, yoy can appreciate this because the visuals are so damned good and this movie just looks better than any movie you've ever seen in the past and probably it will look better than any movie you'll ever see in the future. It's hard to hear some of the robots speak and it's difficult to hear some of the human dialog, especially galling is missing some of the great one liners and insults the robots have for humans. It's also hard to hear the human insults. Sometimes. The cast is great, fantastic but the lady that plays Sam's mother is ...over the top a lot.

Which brings me to the first half hour or so of the movie. It's really...retarded. I mean everything about it, the lines, the "plot", the development of the characters. It's as if someone retarded wrote it (no offense) and then took drugs and rewrote it. The lines are all pretty much dumb, Sam's mom eating pot laced brownies is NOT funny at all, the acting is overdone, the "energy" is disapated by how awful the lines and script and dialog are and it is pretty much embarassing. Then about a half hour in or so it picks up and turns almost normal for TRANSFORMERS movie. People say things that make sense and start acting like normal people do and not as someone in a movie trying despeartely to get laughs. Henceforth the Latino room mate in college gets a terrible entrance and to his credit, the actor makes you like him regardless. Thankfuly the script gets on iwth the good stuff and makes the actors earn their due by turning into something resembling logic rather than continuing on the way the first part of the movie was: dumb. It then becomes all gloss, effects, action action action, noise, explosions, running, chasing, and ther's nothing wrong with that, except that...all of that goes on WAY too long. After too much action, it ceases to be action or exciting.

The truth is if something as horrible like this happened there would be chaos in the war field and that's depicted well. The other truth is that I never really liked TRANSFORMERS on tv but I like these two movies thanks to the real life live action and characters, although on both counts, they almost lost me in the first half of this LONG LONG movie. I never was a big fan of what robot was what. Therefore I could almost never tell any of the bad guys apart in the action and never tell who was good, who was bad, and during the fast paced, eye challenging battles, I lost track of what good guy was what good guy and what bad guy was doing what to which. That sort of dilutes it, that along iwth missing some of the snappy supposedly funny lines.

All in all, it ended up being a good movie, nothing too taxing on your brain like CASTROVALVA and WARRIOR'S GATE might be but a good movie nevertheless. But next time it might be better for me to watch it on a dvd where I can put on subtitles, get all the dialog, and maybe watch it in increments than all at once. Leaving the movie, I felt like I had been in a war myself. Watching this was a challenge so maybe that was it. Again, though I can recommend the overall movie, which while watching the first half hour I was thinking, "Oh no, I can't recommemd this mentally challenged movie."